Uncle Mike's Uncommon Considerations. Short Poems by Michael P. Garofalo.

The Arrows of Time
    never rest,
moving forward unrelenting
    irreversible
from hot towards cold
from organized to disorganized
from past to future
from moving towards stillness
from life towards death.
Or,
so it seems,
    to us,
    with our little particulars,
    with our homebrew views,
    with our social habits a must.

The Spiderwebs of Time
are legion
multitudes of nows and thens;
Uncountable heres and theres
unhitched
from any eternal present
everywhere.

The Moments of Time
are a matrix of memories,
colored by fondness,
vaguer and vaguer by the day,
fading, cropped, mixed,
deleted, falling away.

The Times of Your Life
from birth to death,
can't be denied.
How did you live?
Where, when, why?
What did it mean?
Was a little a lie?

[The old walnut grove in the
photograph was cut down in
2004 and was soon replaced
with a grove of little almond
trees near Tehama CA. Nuts!
So, Function before Beauty.]

The Mind is a vast Bodhi Grove,
The body a Bodhi tree.
Dirt is in every cranny,
Flowers blossom, leaves bud,
nuts drop, leaves fall.

The Bodhi Trees were
cut down,
The Bright Mirrors shattered.
Beginning with nothing,
Replant the trees,
remake the mirrors.

Make one's mind like a mirror,
One's body like the Giving Tree.
Reflect accurately
and impartially;
Give nuts and shade.

TV is Deceiving
On episodes of sit-coms
(But few are funny),
Or on news with political scenes,
Or on sports fans cheering teams,
Or on ads on buying things
Or on shows on alien beings.
These are hardly strange
With colors and graphics galore
And narrators so melodious.
People are going to Dream
Of fake heroes and heroines,
No matter how odious.

Somewhere, a tired older man,
Stoned and asleep in his shorts,
Dreams of tortillas and tomatillos,
Eating in foggy ports,
Catching flies with chopsticks,
Reading Wallace Stevens' Quartz.

Yesterday, I was thinking
about the "Absolute"
(whatever that is,
or means, or creates,
or controls, or becomes).

Absolute Zero - Death!
Clearly, a deep slowing
Super-Conducting
Absolute No.

Then, the Past: a second ago,
a century ago ... Dead Time—
Absolutely kaputt!

Newton's Absolute Time—
Tilted over by Einstein's Mind,
his equations, the tested finds.

"I'm absolutely certain,"
she said, testifying in court.
Still, the jury will decide.

Absolutes squirm beneath
Realities, e.g., limits, maybes,
compromises, adjustments,
modifications, cheats, lies.

Ornamental Plums,
     brilliant white,
     bursting forth,
Hiding the garden.
Some days, only the Garden,
     entire, serene.
Yet, hiding from sight,
     shy, single plants.
Seeing Both, sometimes,
Many but One—
  Sweat poured from my
     startled brow,
Dripping on the dry earth;
  and all became Sunshine
    and shadows of surprise
      unraveling.

Seconds, minutes, hours;
days, months, seasons;
July, August, September.
Woman, Child, Man;
Heaven, Human, Earth;
Past, Present, Future—
   Threesomes of Reasons
   for the comings and goings
   and stayings of Things—
   signs of a mystical "Three".

Live long enough,
and the losses pile up,
Till you're tossed away
like an old cracked cup,
All stained and worm,
dulled by time,
Useless, leaking,
not worth a dime.
Then, you die, sometime.

Egoless, your flesh falls away,
You, a skeleton becomes;
Lost in Nirvana,
lights out,
all done.

Nine months later—
to your utter surprise,
you awaken in bed,
Changed, very much alive.
Not as Kafka's Ungeheueres
Ungeziefer,
or as Casper the Ghost
covered in fur;
Not as a Memaloose on the Run,
but as a horny Stud Skeleton.

Then, the Skeleton Woman
drinks your dry tears,
Drums your still heart,
and sings away fears,
Slips under the quilts
and gives Love a Whirl;
Spinning, twirling,
your reborn as a Girl.

Forget yourself,
crack the cup on the floor,
Speak in a new voice,
the past is no more.

Gleaming gas pumps
In the fluorescent night,
Slaves of the Almighty Dollar,
Pouring hot octanes
Into the bellies of Chevies.

Ding! Ding! Gallons go down.
Wallets open and fold.
Acid fogs melt steel belted moons.

"I first met Chang San-Feng
above the forest,
near the clear spring,
when gathering clouds
darkened the day,
and Mt. Shasta was silent.

His long beard was
black as emptiness,
ear lobes to his shoulders,
holding obsidian in his hand,
pointing to the sun,
eyes staring into infinity,
his long body clothed in silence.

We exchanged "hellos"
smiled and bowed,
a barbarian and an Immortal,
both panting from the climb,
laughing,
ten-thousand echoes
between our rocky minds.

After billions upon billions
of heartbeats past
(For he must have been
888 years old),
I was so bold
as to ask the ancient one
for the sacred mantra of yore.
He lifted his whisk,
and brushed my face,
I could not speak,
my lips were stone,
ideas stopped—
I was alone."

Haiku, Brief Free Verse, Photos
Tercets, Concrete Poems, Quartets
Cinquains, Waka, Couplets, Senryu
30 Letters Max Per Line of Text
Uncle Mike's Cellphone Poetry Series

"In the red ball flesh
Of this decaying tree
Sapless woody shards
Of centuries of seasons
Nourish the new roots
Of Mindfulness
Sprouting.
Yes, Yes, but how can it be?
The up-surging waves of life
Sprout forth
From the decaying tree,
As sure as sunrise rolling
Over the deep black sea.
Coming, coming,
Endlessly Coming;
waves of Qi.

Can you hear the Blue Dragon
Singing in the decaying tree;
Or is it the White Tiger
Roaring in the wilderness
Of your bright white skull?
No matter!
The answer is in the questioning;
Don't you Chan men see?" ...

Master Chang somehow,
someway,
slowly disappeared
into the red brown heart
of the decaying tree.
Then the squawk of the Jay
opened my mind's eye
to the new day—
Namaste!

Gardens are demanding pets.
A garden is made up of stories,
    not things.
Nature is always pregnant.
You are given Today—
    make it matter.
Night and day were the first clock.
It is more about You and Now,
   rather than Them and Back Then.
The Uhr Spell is "Abundant Fertility."
What you see depends on
    when you look.
Complexity is closer to the Truth.
Beauty is the Mistress,
    the gardener her slave.
Despite the gardener's
    best intentions
    Nature will improvise.
There is not much to say
    about the "Unknown."
Rough hands, callused palms,
    and dirty fingernails
    precede Green Thumbs.
A working hypothesis is
    far better than a belief.
The empty garden is already full.
To garden is the reward.
In general, be more specific.
Always make explicit
    the costs of success.
Your garden will do for you in
    proportion to what you
    do for it.

Pulling Onions - Over 1,000 One-Liners

Damn!  Stop feeling sorry
    for myself,
Get up, stand up, move,
    get a grip, don't be a wimp.
Smile, put up a fight
    no matter what ain't right.

The sermon
spun on the still point:
dropping of eternity,
picking up time;
letting go of self,
awakened to Mind.

Last day of Autumn;
clothes in a closet,
next year's calendar,
only glass in the picture frame—
Form is emptiness.

First day of Winter;
all trees are leafless,
kitchen table bare,
no money in my wallet—
Emptiness is form.

Haiku, Brief Free Verse, Photos Tercets, Concrete Poems, Quartets Cinquains, Waka, Couplets, Senryu 30 Letters Max Per Line of Text Uncle Mike's Cellphone Poetry Series

Pulling Onions - Over 1,000 One-Liners

Haiku, Brief Free Verse, Photos
Tercets, Concrete Poems, Quartets
Cinquains, Waka, Couplets, Senryu
30 Letters Max Per Line of Text
Uncle Mike's Cellphone Poetry Series